Flowers for Her
by Morna
Summary: From the very beginning, he always thought she would look lovely with flowers in her hair. Zutara.


Flowers for Her

The first time he ever saw her was in the South Pole. She was small and trembling, but not from the ice and the snow. From him. She was afraid of him. He should have relished the fear in her eyes reflected back at him. He should have enjoyed the sight of her and the others cowering before him and his men as they came to their impoverished tribe with their huge ship made of cruel, black iron. He should have loved the sound of terror in her voice as she spoke to him in quaking tones. But he did not.

Instead, he saw himself kneeling prostrate on the ground before the man that he called father towering over him. He blinked and dismissed the thought as weakness. There was the Avatar to deal with. He had no time for a simple girl from a village of no consequence.

A strange thought did occur to him though as he stared at her. The crown of her head was bare and unadorned. It seemed wrong to him somehow, almost obscene. He wondered how she would look with flowers in her hair.

They were deep underground in the Crystal Caverns beneath Ba Sing Sei. He and she were bathed in pale green light, and his heart had cracked in two. He found himself torn and uncertain. He did not know where his loyalties lay, and it angered him. It was her fault. She had shown him kindness, seen his insecurities and made him vulnerable to them. He lashed out at her. He betrayed her trust and refused her offer. He found himself changed but only felt the storm this change caused. Nothing came easy for him. Everything must be difficult and fraught with turmoil for him to accept it. It was how he had come into this world, and it was how he shaped it around him.

They fought as enemies, as equals. The battle raged, and they poured themselves into it as friends betrayed, except he realized they were not friends. For that one tenuous moment though, they might have been. They might have reached across the lines of their people and their pasts and found some solace together. He thought there might have been something like peace in the feel of her hand against his cheek.

When the fight was fought, he came out the victor though he did not feel like it. She stared at him lost and full of despair, her eyes wide with desperation as she cradled a broken boy to her chest. Her hair was down. It was the only time he had ever seen it like that, and he thought it a great pity that it should have been under those circumstances. He wanted to soothe the wounded look of her face, and run his hands through her dark waves and weave firelilies into them.

The war was over, but the ruin remained. The sun was setting on the city that he had betrayed and helped deliver into the hands of its enemies. His newly found friends were talking and laughing and acting as if they were mere teenagers. Friends, it was a strange word to him. Its sounded alien to his ears, and its taste was foreign to his tongue. Sometimes he would just say their names when speaking to them because he could, to remind himself that these were _his_ friends, his companions, people he loved. Love was another word that did not come easily to him. It was awkward and thorny. It was hard to say and even harder to comprehend when someone used it in context with him. Still, he liked the flavor of these words. He liked the responses they elicited from other people, and the emotions they created within him.

Most strange of all were the stirrings in his chest that occurred when he looked at her now. They had always been there he realized, but they had never been so strong. It was far less easy to ignore them now. They were relentless and determined. He had no right to these feelings. He had not earned them. He did not deserve them. Still, when he looked at her he thought he saw the same thing written on her features, in the glimmer of her eyes, in the curve of her smile. She smiled often at him now. She even embraced him, pressing her small frame to his and resting her cheek in the hollow of his collarbone. He remembered how the first time she had he could only hold onto her weakly out of shock and stroke her hair lightly with his fingertips.

He stepped out onto the balcony when he saw her leave through the doors. He waited in the shade and watched as she approached the boy he had once hunted. They talked and then kissed. That strange organ in his chest that usually didn't respond to any of his wishes fractured just a little at the sight of them. He could not speak. He choked on his shock and anger. His words refused to form. He could not move. His feet were like blocks of lead, and his legs were little better than pillars of stone.

The thing he noticed most though was on that day she wore a single, pink blossom in her hair. He could only think that neither the kiss nor the flower suited her.

Years had passed since the defeat of Fire Lord Ozai, and they had all grown up and grown apart. They lived at different corners of the globe with different lives and responsibilities. He had not seen her for what felt like centuries, but they still talked and laughed so easily. She still made his heart thunder inside his chest and made him make a fool of himself for her.

This was a special occasion, the only kind that could bring them all together. The girl had now become a woman though she still carried herself the same. She would always be the same compassionate girl he'd met on the ice floes all those years ago. She wasn't wearing blue this time but yellow and orange. They were inside a small reception hall and outside the whole world was waiting for her.

She had a bouquet clutched nervously in her hands, held so tightly her knuckles were white. She asked him if she was missing anything. He looked her over and stared at the top of her head, recalling their first encounter. He turned then and set the crown of flowers on her head. It was composed of firelilies and yellow orchids. It was the most beautiful crown he had ever seen, more beautiful than one formed of any precious metal or jewels.

Then the doors opened, and she started the longest walk of his life down the aisle to bind herself to another.

She finally wore flowers in her hair, but it was not for him.

He walks down the gangplank of the ferry onto the small island in the bay. The sun is setting and casting everything in bronze and copper and rose. He can almost appreciate the view. Almost. Aang's statue stares out across the city, its eternal guardian. He looks up at it and sighs. He is not sure whether it is bitterness or gratitude he feels that towards effigy of the past Avatar.

The former Fire Lord makes his way across the island, bowing to the acolytes and murmuring the appropriate greetings. Tenzin sees him but only gives him a passing nod. Zuko returns it and is grateful for the discretion.

He stands at a rocky outcropping that juts out right into the middle of the sea. This is where the waves are the most violent and turbulent. They beat against the rocks mercilessly and send foam flying. The air is filled with salty mist from the ocean that stings his eyes. Tears form, and he tells himself it's from the saltwater all around him.

He kneels down, his knees creaking in protest, and studies the inscribed stone in front of him. He has read it a thousand times before on his many visits, but he can never stop himself from rereading it. He always has to reprocess the fact that she is absent from the world, and it always hurts anew. He takes one palsied hand from behind his back and lays his offering to her on her headstone. He gathers the old, dead flowers in his gnarled fingers. They are dried and faded from the elements of the sun and the water. He smiles to himself at the parallel. Did time not do the same to him and his friends? Did it not strip the color from their eyes and their memories, leaving only sepia tinged impressions?

He tosses the faded things onto the water where they are quickly swallowed up by the greedy waves.

"I have finally brought you flowers," he whispers to the grave, "but I cannot give them to you."

Then the ancient king hangs his head and weeps.

**This is an entry from Zutara Week 2012 for the prompt Faded. I might upload some other entries as well if you guys would be interested.**


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